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...our house is gone. The one that I posted a picture of below has been rented.

Le sigh.

Back to the drawing board...

Clay & Sara get into town tomorrow afternoon and we're either just hanging out around the apartment playing games and watching TV or we're going to drive up to Lancaster to see the Lancaster Jethawks play the Inland Empire 66ers in Minor League Baseball.

Thursday we're going to the Braves/Dodgers game.

Friday we're road tripping down to San Diego and seeing the Padres/Braves game.

Saturday we're going to Sea World in the morning, Padres/Braves game in the early afternoon and then back to Sea World for the evening! Good times.

Sunday we're driving back up to the Valley.

Yee haw!

What are you doing for 4th?

More Clay, Sara, Anji & Stephen roadtrip fun to come!

I have finally traveled outside of the United States.

On Sunday morning, Anji, Clay, Sara and myself decided to head to Mexico. Mainly just to say that we have been.

Well, we have been.

I didn't take my camera because the battery was running low so I don't have any images for you. However, I'll say that I'm glad we did it and I'll almost certainly never do it again.

I know that Tijuana is just a tourist town and isn't at all an accurate representation of some of the beautiful aspects of the country as a whole. However, in the nicest possible way I put it - Tijuana was a shit hole. ;)

It took about 2 hours to get back into the country which was unexpected.

We had Coca-Cola Light which was really cool and I bought some chiclets from a very nice man in a wheelchair.

Another gentleman tried to sell me a scorpion, but I politely declined.

I've been working my butt off today. Did the laundry this morning. I cleared out the aquarium from the living room and carried it out to trash can where I suspect someone will take it. Paige is not happy that his fish are gone, but luckily I suspect he'll forget about them in a short time.

We're heading out to Texas tomorrow afternoon for the weekend to find us a place to live. Wish us luck!

We saw Order of the Phoenix last night. All in all we both liked it despite having some fairly big issues with a couple of choices. Michael Gambon continues to have no clue how to play Dumbledore. We'll post some more thoughts on that soon.

One popped up yesterday that we are absolutely in love with. The style is us, it has a pool. It's a bit small, but it's also cheaper which means we can save up money and be able to afford more house when we buy in a year or so.

I'm posting the available pictures of this property below. Wish us luck because we really think this is the place that we want!

It has a certain something!

Well....we found a place that we really love and it isn't the one that we posted pictures of earlier...but Anji will be back with more on that in a bit. In the meantime, I'm posting a few amusing pictures for those of you who know us well...

The view from the hotel room in Grapevine. Have you seen a flatter place?

Doesn't this just look "right"?

No words are needed...

Getting closer!

Be on the look out for Anji's update about the house in a few minutes!

Serendipity. Kismet. Fate.

All of these come to mind when I think about today, and none quite captures how I feel about our house hunt today.

We saw somewhere around 10 houses, and for the most part they all blur together in a muddy memory of blah. I'm on overload.

First, the bad- I have three words for you: Corvette wallpaper borders. Seriously. The houses that got the thumbs down had a couple of things in common: they were older, and had really bad wallpaper. In addition to the Corvette borders, we saw farm animals, fruit, and tractors. Yes, tractors.

And the good: we saw two houses that we wouldn't mind living in. One, the house with the pool that Stephen blogged about below: it's on the small side, but overall we liked it. There's a window seat in the front room for the cats to look out of, a nice-sized living room, and a huge yard with a pool. We met the owner while we were there, and she seemed to like us. It's 3.5 miles from work. We put the application in, though there were 4 people who submitted before us. I think the fact we met the owner will work in our favor.

BUT, that pool house is just our backup house. We found one in Bedford that we both love. I had picked out the listing initially, but Stephen hated it and it was only my stubbornness that kept it in the viewing schedule. It's a two-story brick house, just over 2000 square feet, on a corner. Check it out:

Stephen isn't too keen on the fact that it's in a "cookie-cutter" community where all the houses on the block have the same feel and similar look, but it's a pleasant, clean neighborhood. The biggest downside is the miniscule back yard:

Yep, that's it. The whole thing. At least it won't take long to mow.

When you walk in the front, you walk straight into the living room, with the dining room straight ahead and the kitchen at the back to the right. If you turn right immediately after walking in, you hit the office, the laundry room, a closet, a half-bath, the garage entry, and the stairs. Here's the downstairs:

View walking in:

Same view, looking back in from the back door:

The kitchen:

There weren't many pictures available of the upstairs. When you walk up, there is a landing with a window and sill that I can see the cats hanging out on. At the top of the stairs, to the right there is a loft area that will become our game/ media room. To the left is a full bath and a Bedroom 3. Going down the hallway there is Bedroom 2, and the whole back is the Master bedroom. It's relatively large, and the bathroom is nice: separate garden tub and shower, walk-in closet.

We decided this was home. It felt like home the second we walked in. Over lunch, we filled out the paperwork on the house and the realtor drove it over- they had said one other applicant had paid the fee yesterday, but if they still hadn't returned their application when ours arrived we'd be #1 in line for the house. And it turns out that they hadn't, so we are first in line for the house provided that the owner likes our applications. We had to submit my offer letter from New Company, and also the two last pay stubs from my Current Company. Panic, because I didn't have them. So I text messaged Jess and it turns out she was at work. On a Saturday. Luck! So she faxed over the pay stubs to the realtor for me, and I owe her big time.

Everything about this house seems to fit. It just works, and it has all been falling into place suspiciously well. Serendipity!

The realtor says she'll call us tomorrow with an update, but it will likely be Monday due to the credit and background checks needing to be done. Cross those fingers for us!

We're back from Texas.

There would have been a lot more pictures as we drove around the town that that the house we want is located in, but since I'm still learning my camera I had a setting off and it was on a really harsh blue setting.

That said, I was able to rescue one picture. This is the entrance into the sub division that we are hoping we can call our neighborhood!

I had my 1st First Class experience on the return flight yesterday. It was definitely nicer. No question about it. I was trying to get some work done on the flight which was impossible since the flight attendants were bringing us something new every 30 seconds - but that is a completely bearable complaint.

We're really hoping that we hear something on our two choices today and we know something - you'll know something.

For those of you who are on Facebook, I finally created a profile over there.

Friend me!

We're still waiting to hear back on the houses. Our wonderful real estate agent emailed us yesterday and let us know that the agent who is dealing with the house on Willow Way was having some problems in her office access reports and that there was a back log of apps to be processed for various properties. We're hoping to hear something today as we've both got a major league case of the jitters.

In the meantime, I'm trying to keep myself buy with various projects and hobbies and ignore the churning feeling in my stomach and the desire to stress eat beyond compare.

In fact, I've put on WAY too much weight during this process. I have a doctors appt Thursday and I'm stressing over that due to all the weight I've gained. I'm hoping to make a conscious effort to change my bad habit of eating when I'm bored/stressed and change that to doing something productive like working on a project or running on the elliptical machine. I've had those aspirations before, but I'm back to being a big disgusted by myself - so maybe this time will work for real?

I may have to get it if I decide that Barack is my guy - which I'm leaning towards now.

Yep, it's ours - well, we're renting it for a year before we buy, but you never know - we may make an offer on this one! Our Real Estate agent will be sending over the lease which we sign and send our first month, security deposit and pet deposit and it's ours!

You have no idea how thrilled we are to have this behind us and know where we are going to be living for the foreseeable future. It was terrifying knowing that in two weeks our stuff would be gone, but unclear as to where!

Hooray, hooray!

QTMR: Zodiac
Better than most films simply because it was directed by David Fincher. A little bit too long. Robert Downey Jr was phenomenal as always. Mark Ruffalo was quite good as well. Jake was Jake. I really like San Francisco on film, but not so much in person.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

The preceding was the first in the "Quick Thought Movie Reviews" feature we figure to add to the site.

QTMR: The Number 23
Jim Carrey is a much better actor than I think people give him credit for. Joel Schumacher is just as bad of a director as people say he is. A really interesting premise that ended up being over explained and preachy. With some re-writes and a director in the mold of Aronofsky, Fincher or even Christopher Nolan it could of been a psychological masterpiece. As it stands, it was just a decent way to spend a couple of hours.
Rating: 3 out of 5

QTMR: Premonition
I really dislike Sandra Bullock. This film was a convoluted mess. The ending was horrible and not even remotely satisfying. Stay far, far away from this dreck.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5

Did you watch last night? I really enjoyed it.

For me, John Edwards moved down a bit on my list while Joe Biden rocketed up.

I'd love to see Biden either get the nomination or serve as the extremely experienced man that serves as running mate for the one-term senator Barack Obama.

Biden/Obama or Obama/Biden - either way, I'm happy.

Well, we are frantically getting prepared for the packers who will be here tomorrow morning between 8-10am.

It's really insane trying to organize your stuff into "I won't see you for over a week" and "I need to drag you onto the RV". It's a challenging dance.

Nonetheless, whether we're ready or not tomorrow is the day. I'll try and take some pictures tomorrow as the progress begins.

We'll more or less be radio silent starting now, but there will be updates on the blog. Beyond that - if you're one of the chosen few who have our mobiles numbers - feel free to give us a buzz! ;)

We have a lot more space and not a lot of furniture.

We need to buy:
- Dining Room Set
- Coffee Table
- Bedroom Set

So, the question for you is - where do you like to shop? Where have you found great deals on furniture?

Attention all webbpage readers.

It was inevitable. If you know me personally at all then you probably expected this to happen weeks ago. I am officially FREAKING OUT!

Okay - not too much, but I need to start unhooking the TV set up in the living room and then the computers here in the office and everytime I start I tend to just start walking around in circles muttering under my breath.

I knew there was a reason that I loved Kreacher in Deathly Hallows.

The plus side is that I think today and tomorrow will prove to be the worst part for me and then it's home stretch!